Blueglass

“Looking back, it seems that was how Jude always was with me: keeping his distance, never asking for anything I might not want to give. That steadiness that I took to be a strength--his consistency--I realize now was a kind of boundary, a way of drawing a line in the sand. Like a sprinkling of salt at the threshold, it was a kind of spell to keep himself safe, unchanged. What he needed more than anything was to believe he needed nothing, that if I should ever leave, he'd remain the same man. But I had his key in my coat pocket and I was happy then, because it seemed like he was letting me in.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I wonder if there is something wrong with me, she thought, that I can get so much from so little, because all my joy comes from not doing–not spending summer afternoons in stuffy drawing-rooms listening to women setting their neighbours’ morals to rights over the bridge table, not spending summer evenings listening to men and women setting the world’s affairs to right over five-course dinners, not sewing in circles, nor reading in groups. I must be very selfish, she thought, for I want set nothing and no-one right; all I want is to be left in peace to make what I can of this problem called life for myself and my children. What would the world be like, she wondered, if everyone minded his own business?”
― Josephine Leslie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

“It was hard to argue with him when he played the card of time--his winning hand, all those years he had over me.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“It never really goes away, the longing for the life not lived, because isn’t that part of how we come to know ourselves too? Through what we lack as much as what we have, all we dream but do not hold. Some desires have no resolution.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt